I was 4 years into the project. So much for a few months eh? But it was starting to look like a truck again.
The cab alone took me 2 years to restore. I had to build a lot of new parts like the running boards from scratch. My friend Dennis at Truck Specialists sold me a rebuilt Eaton Fuller 9095 9 speed transmission, and I put the old 4 speed auxiliary tranny back in, giving me a total of 36 forward, and 8 reverse gears. I left the old Timken top loader diffs in it, planning on upgrading them with a cut-off from something a little faster geared someday. At 6:44 to 1 ratio, it didn’t go very fast, but it could pull a building over.
The rad was shot. It took a long time to save up to get it re-cored but eventually it was installed and it wasn’t long after that that I took it for it’s first drive around the yard. To say I was a proud puppy is a huge understatement.
But there was still a lot of work to be done, mainly bodywork. A few doors down was my friend Bill’s body shop. He was the consummate pro and he was pretty disgusted with my attempts at body repair. He told me to bring it over to his yard and that he’d teach me how to do bodywork, properly. Apparently, slathering gobs of Bondo all over the bad parts isn’t the right way to do it.
It was 6 years since I dragged the old beast to the shop.